The God came in the likeness of a beautiful youth with the first
down of manhood upon his lips. He chid the much-enduring one for
his rash haste, and gave him what we should call not very good
advice; but he also gave him something which was worth more than
any good advice, a charm which should prevail against the spells of
the Nymph, which he might carry in his bosom and be unscathed.
It was an ugly enough herb, a prickly plant which sprawled low in
the shadow of the trees. Its root was black, and it had a milk-
white flower; the Gods called it Moly, and no mortal strength could
avail to pull it from the soil; but as Odysseus says, telling the
story, "There is nothing which the Gods cannot do"; and it came up
easily enough at the touch of the beardless youth. We know how the
spell worked, how Odysseus rescued his companions, and how Circe
told him the way to the regions of the dead; but even so he did not
wholly escape from her evil enchantment!
2
No one knows what the herb Moly really was; some say it was the
mandrake, that plant of darkness, which was thought to bear a
dreadful resemblance, in its pale swollen stalk and outstretched
arms, to a tortured human form, and to utter moans as it was
dragged from the soil; but later on it was used as the name for a
kind of garlic, employed as a flavouring for highly-spiced salads.
The Greeks were not, it seems, very scientific botanists, so far as
nomenclature went, and applied any name that was handy to any plant
that struck their fancy.
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